ABSTRACT
Whenever the composition of a neighbourhood changes, the place sounds and looks differently. We realise that it has changed because we hear and read different languages than the ones we expected or were used to. Language, in that sense, is the most immediate and direct identifier of people and the most immediately sensitive indicator of social change. And disciplined attention to language can help identify the nature and direction of such processes of change, sometimes years before such changes show up in official statistics.
